What CNN Did Right

Up-to-the-second news has a way of crumbling in your hands if you don’t handle it carefully – and sometimes even if you do. This is one of the reasons an Associated Press editor told his troops to stop "taunting" the competition for its goof on social-media sites: Stop smirking, it could happen to you, buster. And the right thing to do when it happens to you (or you happen to it, which is a better description) is to do what CNN did: Publish a prompt and unequivocal correction. Fox, on the other hand, issued a statement claiming that its rolling, on-air update sufficed to correct the record, even if the error appeared in a Chyron.

Drudge also never issued a correction. Paul Waldman, meanwhile, pleads with CNN to prize accuracy over speed.